A Surrogate Adventure

Sorry to leave those of you reading these blogs hanging!  It's amazing how my motivation to write these goes up and down so drastically. I last left you hanging with having to up my meds quite a bit since my lining wasn't where the doctor wanted it to be for implantation.  Well, I went back last Monday for a follow up ultra sound and sadly there was no improvement, and I now had some fluid build up which was a sign that the increase and changed method of medication delivery, was now too much for my body.  A total bummer for all involved but definitely a common occurrence.  I checked in with my caseworker and intended parents and let myself be bummed out for the day before getting back in the positive mindset.  I also reached out to my support group and got a lot of great feedback on how normal this was.  I was told by the doctor to stop all meds right away, they would call in a new prescription for me to start that night - which would force me to get my p...

The last two weeks have been a lot of the same since my week 2 IVF post.  Same meds each day, rinse, repeat and wait.  Although, I did have my first evening to night-time outing that required me to pack up my Lupron to take on the go.  It needs to be refrigerated, which makes things a little more challenging, but thank goodness for big purses and private bathroom stalls!  It still felt very odd giving myself an injection while other women were coming in and out of the bathroom at the restaurant. Travel makeup bag becomes mini cooler! I've been anxiously awaiting my ultrasound appointment so they could check my lining and give me the go ahead to start progesterone and lock in the official implantation date for the week after.  The day finally came yesterday and the doctor was so on time that I ended up on the table with a way too full bladder after a 30 minute drive and morning coffee.  She thought my lining looked thinner than they were hoping for but...

I've been getting a lot of questions (which I do not mind at all!) and lately the most common one is, since I was able to conceive naturally, why do I need to take all the hormones?  It's a great question that I thought myself when first researching surrogacy.  In order to answer it, let's take a trip back to our middle school sex ed class.  So tune out now if "menstrual" talk makes you uneasy. A menstrual cycle is a series of natural processes that a women body goes through to prepare for pregnancy each month. The cycle is controlled by hormones which naturally rise and fall at different stages and is around 28 days per cycle.  The beginning of the cycle is day 1 of a women's period, which is when then uterus lining breaks down.  Also, at the beginning of the cycle follicle-stimulating hormone FHS is produced.  The FSH stimulates a number of follicles (cavities holding undeveloped eggs) to develop and start to produce the hormone estrogen. The level o...

I survived the first week of hormones!  Kinda... The Lupron injections hit me way harder than I expected.  However I did go in with a naive outlook about the side effects on purpose.  I figured if I researched them too much then I would have the placebo effect (reverse effect?) of reading into everything as being a side effect.  After of few days of the injections I decided to look things up and the list of side effects is terrifyingly long!  So I'm really happy I did not look them up before I started but was good to know that everything I was feeling was on that list.  Feel free to google it, but be warned! I started the injections last Monday evening.  They need to be taken at the same time each night so we decided post-bed time was probably the best idea.  As my case worker said, "What? You don't want your kids running into you while your giving yourself a shot?"  No thanks!  Wednesday morning I woke up super cranky and with a neck ...